Run an Always-On Hub

For a Hub that’s reachable even when your laptop is off, run it as a container on an always-on host. Treeline publishes a Hub image, and the requirements are the same on any platform.

The generic recipe

Whatever you run it on — a provider, a VPS, or your homelab — a Hub needs five things:

1. Run the image ghcr.io/treeline-money/treeline-hub — track :latest, or pin a version like :26.5.2402 for a reproducible deploy.
2. Expose port 4242 (the port the Hub listens on).
3. Mount a persistent volume at /root/.treeline — this holds your DuckDB database, the master token, and OAuth state.
4. Set TL_HUB_TOKEN to a value you choose, so the master token is stable across redeploys. (Without it, one is generated into the volume and only shown in the logs.)
5. Put it behind HTTPS — most providers give you a TLS domain automatically.

Caution

Step 3 is the one people miss. Without a persistent volume, your database lives in the container’s ephemeral filesystem and is wiped on every restart or redeploy.

These map directly onto Render, Railway, a Docker-capable VPS, or any container platform — deploy the image, attach a disk at /root/.treeline, set the env var, expose 4242, and use the platform’s HTTPS domain.

Example: Fly.io

Fly gives you a free *.fly.dev HTTPS URL, a persistent volume, and scale-to-zero so an idle Hub costs almost nothing.

1. Install flyctl and run fly auth login.

2. Create the app, a volume, and your token secret (pick a nearby region with fly platform regions):

   fly apps create my-treeline-hub
   fly volumes create treeline_data --size 1 -r sjc -a my-treeline-hub
   fly secrets set TL_HUB_TOKEN=<your-token> -a my-treeline-hub

3. Save this fly.toml (replace the app name):

   app = "my-treeline-hub"
   primary_region = "sjc"
   
   [[mounts]]
     source = "treeline_data"
     destination = "/root/.treeline"
   
   [http_service]
     internal_port = 4242
     force_https = true
     auto_stop_machines = "suspend"
     auto_start_machines = true
     min_machines_running = 0
   
   [[vm]]
     cpu_kind = "shared"
     cpus = 1
     memory = "256mb"

4. Deploy the published image:

   fly deploy --image ghcr.io/treeline-money/treeline-hub:latest -a my-treeline-hub --ha=false

Your Hub is now at https://my-treeline-hub.fly.dev.

Your own hardware

Running on a homelab box, NAS, or VPS with Docker? Use Compose:

docker-compose.yml

services:
  treeline-hub:
    image: ghcr.io/treeline-money/treeline-hub:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "4242:4242"
    environment:
      TL_HUB_TOKEN: "replace-with-your-token"
    volumes:
      - treeline-data:/root/.treeline

volumes:
  treeline-data:

docker compose up -d

Exposing it to the internet — for mobile or cloud AI — is your standard hosting setup: front it with a reverse proxy and TLS, a tunnel, or keep it LAN-only.

Next: connect your devices and agents.